The Garou
by Reija Linn
Summary: A crossover with the RPG Werewolf - The Apocalypse (You don't have to know it to read the story, though). Slash. Work in Progress. INDEFINATELY ON HOLD.
1. Chapter I: The Bone Gnawers

Title: The Garou  
Author: Reija Linn (T'Reija)  
Email/Feedback: theganan@gmx.de or thiari@theganan.de  
Archive: Azkaban's Lair, ff-net. Others please ask beforehand and leave the full header intact.  
Originally posted: SBRL list  
Codes: Sirius/Remus, a/u, x-over, Werewolf-The Apocalypse  
Rating: [R]  
  
Summary: When Remus runs away from Sirius in a frenzy during a full moon, they accidentally stumble upon a group of strange individuals. While appearing as harmless if filthy tramps to most people, Sirius finds their bulky forms, sharp fangs and pointed ears more than a little disconcerting. And when under the as of yet full moon their leader proudly announces himself to be a werewolf, a plot of such strange complexity unravels upon our heroes that both their lives seem forever changed.  
  
Spoilers: Haven't read the books? Do so. Right away. Do not eat, sleep or pause until you're finished. Then come back.  
  
Warnings: male/male sexuality and/or relationship(s) featured within. Don't like, don't read, don't flame. Simple really, though seemingly not simple enough for some dim witted clots out there.  
  
Legal disclaimer: I never have, nor ever will, owned the rights to the setting of the Harry Potter books or the characters featured within. The use of said settings and characters by me is for non-commercial purposes only and does not mean to infringe upon the given legal rights that belong to Mrs. J.K.Rowling and those she has associated them with.  
  
Note: Probably won't fit with the events of "Prisoner of Azkaban", at least towards the end of the story, but the characters of Sirius and Remus are as in-character as I can manage to write them. Which, of course, isn't saying anything. Well, it's an x-over with a Roleplaying Game called "Werewolf the Apocalypse", part of the "Word of Darkness" by White Wolf, but you don't have to know it to read the story (though if you *do* know it, please drop me a note - being a RPG player is a rare thing when you're not amongst certain extremely strange and crazy people, so I always appreciate other RPGers online *g*)  
  
  
THE GAROU  
By Reija Linn (September 2002)  
  
Chapter I - The Bone Gnawers  
  
"Welcome to the home of the Bone Gnawers."  
  
Sirius blinked, once, twice, and a third time. His brain felt like it was working through a thick layer of sand, or some very mucky water, and it took him a while to connect the very ironically spoken words he'd just heard to from a sentence. Not a plausible one, mind you, but at least a sentence.  
  
Bone Gnawers?  
  
Home?!  
  
Sirius lifted his head despite the dull, throbbing pain this provoked and, once his sight had cleared, took a deep breath and looked around. He was in a street, or rather, a very narrow, very dirty alley. A dead end, he noted, slightly concerned. Around him there were large, empty oil barrels, a lot of junk and garbage, and a small band of four men and women who looked extremely dirty and run-down. He tilted his head to the side and his eyes fell on an unusually large, broad-shouldered man, probably in his thirties, who was wearing a pair of dirty, torn jeans, a hooded grey sweater and a worn leather jacket. His very thick hair was wild and tangled and reached past shoulder length, and a huge scar covered the right half of his face. He was smiling, slumping his massive body on the filthy ground next to Sirius.  
  
"Oy, Skull, how's it going with the cooking?" he shouted to a girl perhaps a little older than Sirius himself who sat near them in front of one of the barrels in which a fire was burning.  
  
"Getting there, Fang. Just have' ta wait for Rat ta get the bloody water from the rain barrel," the girl replied grinning.  
  
"Argh," Fang replied, "someone toss me a can before I starve, eh?"  
  
A boy in brown leather pants and a T-shirt reading 'Fuck Right Off' on it's front, no older than 16, threw two cans of beer in their general direction, which Fang caught adeptly - with his left hand, Sirius noted. The man's right hand, which he held somewhat protectively in his lap, was badly disfigured, and very hairy. It's crooked fingers sprouted long, sharp nails.  
  
"Want one?" he smiled, quite friendly, though it disconcertingly showed a row of elongated, sharper-than-they-should-be teeth.  
  
Sirius nodded dully. Though he was still feeling dizzy he knew he could hold his alcohol, and beer sounded like a very good thing to his raw and extremely dry throat. Opening the can he shot a look at the young girl, who was now throwing various bits of cardboard, plastic and empty tins into a battered pot in front of her, humming some tune. Where the hell was he? How had he gotten there? And who the bloody hell *were* these people?  
  
He tried to voice his questions, but the only sound that left his lips was a low rasp as he nearly coughed up his mouthful of beer. Taking another large gulp, he finally managed to speak.  
  
"Where... where am I?"  
  
"As I said," Fang replied in the same ironic tone, a glint in his eyes that seemed altogether not human. "The home of the Bone Gnawers. We picked you up in Lupos - you weren't looking all that peaky, so we thought we'd bring you to a safe spot."  
  
"Lupos?!" Sirius croaked.  
  
"Yeah. Shifted as soon as you were out from that last blow. Fierce one. Sorry."  
  
Sirius jerked as a large, mangy, reddish-brown dog of uncertain breed started sniffing at his feet. Despite its non-threatening attitude, there was something so feral in this dog's eyes that Sirius was sure it had never seen a life in any ordered society. It certainly wasn't the look of a pet.  
  
"Don't mind Kinks, she's generally nosy."  
  
The dog started sniffing its way up Sirius' leg, finally burying her snout deep into his groin. Indignantly, Sirius emitted an audible grunt, but didn't move (which would have been difficult anyway, since his back was propped up against a wall and his legs felt too numb to carry his weight.  
  
After a short pause, the girl came over towards them, carrying the heavy pot to his side and handing him a wooden bowl. "Eat."  
  
Sirius regarded her incredulously, then, slowly, lowered his gaze to the mucky, green-brown "stew" in the pot. It smelled almost worse than it looked, and that was quite accomplishing something. Frowning slightly, he put the bowl on the ground beside him.  
  
"Ey," the girl miffed good-naturedly, "I know it don't look too great, but I put some spices in, so t'should taste okay." She took the bowl again and filled it by scooping it into the awful looking substance, then handed it back to Sirius, who sniffed, certainly not intending to actually /eat/ it.  
  
"What happened?" he asked Fang, who obviously had some kind of leader role in this gang of tramps.  
  
"Well," the large, bulky man replied, "as I said, we picked you up in Lupos. Don't know what happened before we arrived, but you and the other bloke, well, you seemed... kinda out of it, if you don't mind me saying, so we reckoned it was the Rage and stopped both of you before you could do any more damage."  
  
"The other... bloke?"  
  
"Yeah. He's in there," he pointed towards a obviously deserted building to their right. "Had to knock him out, you see, was so out if things. Should recover in a while, though. He's still in Lupos."  
  
Lupos. That triggered something. Lupos. Lupin. Remus!  
  
Slowly, Sirius recovered his memory.  
  
The full moon. Moony and he, the Forbidden Forrest. Moony, suddenly sniffing at the air, then running from him, full speed. James... James and Peter weren't with them that night. Foolish, foolish running off in the Forbidden Forrest alone with Moony. Then, after running so long even his canine lungs were panting, the lights. City lights. His desperate howl as Moony regained speed, shot away from him, further and further, heading for the lights. The dim memory of panic - city, lights, people. The feel of hard tar beneath his paws as they ran, closer and closer towards the city centre. The futile knowledge that sooner or later, they would run across muggles, and that Moony would...  
  
"NOOOOO............."  
  
Sirius screamed, and the mongrel leaped away from him. Sirius felt something hard forcefully pressed between his lips, then the sensation of a warm, viscous fluid running down his throat. Instinctively he swallowed. The taste was strange, awkward, but not too bad, though it left an aftertaste that could easily be compared to slightly sour milk. Tilting his head to one side, he managed to take a large gulp of lukewarm beer that somewhat drove away the taste.  
  
"Don't worry," the punk girl smiled at him, breaking a can of beer and swallowing a mouthful of the 'meal' she'd just 'cooked'. "You're safe."  
  
Sirius shot another dubious look around. He was in a filthy dead-end alley with a couple of very strange bums he'd never seen before, with Remus in some shack that didn't look too stable and in werewolf form and having just 'eaten' a stew made from cardboard, plastic and tins. Obviously, this girl had a very strange definition of the word "safe" he hadn't previously been aware of.  
  
Taking a deep gulp of his beer, Sirius tried to bring himself into a completely upright position once more. Strangely, eating the garbage stew seemed to have strengthened him so that he almost felt normal again. And though the environment was dirty, there was something about the barrel fires that soothed him. Trying to order his thoughts he once again directed his gaze towards Fang.  
  
"What time is it?"  
  
"Not quite sure, but according to the moon it's something past 3 am."  
  
Two hours. Two hours till Moony would transform.  
  
"Who are you?"  
  
Fang smiled broadly, and there was something decidedly wolfish in his grin. "They call me Fang Silverscar." Suddenly, instinctively, Sirius knew. He didn't know, of course, who these people were, what they were doing here or why they were helping him now that Remus was locked away safely, but he knew *what* they were. Defence against the Dark Arts was one of Sirius' best subjects, and if ever he'd never seen a werewolf (other than Remus), with his long, sharp teeth, his slightly spiked ears and his gleaming eyes that looked like hot coals, Fang filled the description perfectly. Except, of course, that there was something wrong with the scenario, something that Sirius couldn't quite put his finger on, something that had been said by Fang himself.  
  
His gaze wandered off once again, past the pot of still steaming stew, past the now dim light of the barrel fire, past the heap of rubbish that lay on the moonlit street...  
  
The moon.  
  
That was what Fang had said. 3 am, according to the moon.  
  
The full moon.  
  
He'd seen Remus transform himself. And no werewolf could escape the rays of the moon when it was full. It said so in all the books. Darn, it was Remus' curse, a curse he'd come to know everything about in the past five years.  
  
For he moment, Sirius contemplated his chances of getting out of the alley, then he remembered Remus. He couldn't leave him behind here. He weighed between bluffing his way through the next two hours or confronting Fang with the burning questions his observations had suddenly peeked. Finally, his curiosity won over.  
  
"You're not transformed," he said, weakly.  
  
"So?" Fang replied, non-too concerned, as if it were completely natural. "Neither are you."  
  
"But... but I'm not..."  
  
"Yes?"  
  
"... a werewolf," he blurted out nervously. Fang raised his bushy eyebrows.  
  
"Even in an alley that is home to the bone gnawers, it would be better to use the word 'Garou', instead of 'werewolf'. And everyone of us has seen you transform, has seen your lupos form."  
  
"But..." Sirius halted. He still wasn't quite sure he could trust these people, even though none of them had made a move to hurt or attack him. And surely, everyone could see he was not a werewolf. Sure, his dog form was larger than that of a common housebred canine, but obviously not a wolf. More like a Grim. Any werewolf would know the difference. Any wizard would recognize him as an animagus, young and unregistered as he may be, or even take him to be a Death Omen. So these people had to be muggles, which was strange. While muggle werewolves were just as common as wizard ones, the ministry of magic made sure to move them to a 'safe environment', 'for their own good and the safety of everyone around them, wizard and muggle alike', as they put it. Sure, there were unregistered werewolves, even muggle ones - but surely not that many in a small town? And unaffected by the full moon? Sirius decided that something very strange was going on, but he couldn't be sure of how much he could tell Fang and his gang.  
  
"Is it your first transformation, perhaps?" the boy with the "Fuck Right Off" tee piped in.  
  
"No... yes... um," for once in his life, Sirius Black was at a loss for words. He sincerely wished that Albus Dumbledore were here. He was the most powerful wizard that Sirius knew, surely /he/ would know how to deal with this.  
  
"Well," Fang said, unconsciously scratching himself behind one ear with his long, sharp fingernails, "this kinda complicates things. Bloody hell, I hate complicated things." He broke another can of beer, swearing under his breath. "How much do you really know about the Garou?"  
  
"Garou? Oh, were. Um." Sirius remembered he wasn't supposed to use the word. He decided to start with some information that was so obvious he could be sure not to reveal any unknown facts better kept that way. "I know Moony. I know he transforms on every full moon, each month. I know that it's quite painful for him, and that he doesn't recall being human when in his wolf form, and that the blood-durst drives him to attack humans when he's transformed. Up to now I thought that we... that, um, all Garou inevitably transform during the full moon like he does. It's what all the books say."  
  
"But you don't."  
  
"No, I'm... I don't."  
  
"And neither do we."  
  
"Um. I noticed."  
  
"It's a common misconception amongst humans that the full moon has any influence at all on whether a Garou changes into one of his forms."  
  
"One of..."  
  
"Obviously, they're wrong." Fang started to roll himself a cigarette from a crumpled pack of tobacco single-handedly, then, while lighting his fag, offered the backy to Sirius, who gladly accepted.  
  
"But what about Rem... Moony?" It was enough for them to know one name, one name that couldn't be traced as easily as a birth name.  
  
"Well. I thought he'd just gone into a frenzy up to now. You say he changes every full moon? Only to Lupos?"  
  
Sirius shook his head in confusion. "Come again?" he finally asked.  
  
"Only to the pure wolf form," Fang explained, with more patience than most people would give him credit for, regarding his rough exterior.  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Does he ever change outside the full moon, then?"  
  
"No... I... we didn't think that was possible."  
  
Fang sighed, taking a deep draw from his cigarette.  
  
"Well, I'm not good at things like this. Never heard of something like that before, except in dumb human fairy tales. I'm no Theurge, and I'm certainly no Stargazer. And, to be quite frank, it gives me a crunching headache to think about it. Look, I reckon your friend in there'll come out of it when the moon's set? Let's just wait till then, and then decide what to do. Your luck to stumble upon a pack of Bone Gnawers with abso-bloodly-lutely no idea what's going on." He smiled an ironic grin.  
  
"But we have to get back to Hogwarts!" Sirius exclaimed, horror-struck at the thought of what might occur if Madame Pomfrey found the Shrieking Shack empty in the morning. At Fang's questioning expression, he explained, "the school we go to. On the other side of the forest. Moony's supposed to be in a secured building there during the full moon. No one knows we're here, and if we're not there in the morning - or at least, if Moony isn't - well..."  
  
"Let me guess - not a good thing to happen. Well, it can't be helped right now. Your friend's out of it for the time being, and that ain't likely to change anytime soon. Might as well crack another beer, then."  
  
TBC 


	2. Chapter II: Back at the Castle

THE GAROU  
By Reija Linn  
  
Chapter II - Back at the Castle  
  
When morning came, Sirius and Fang brought the unconscious Remus back to the castle. Sirius transformed himself to his dog form, and to his great astonishment, Fang transformed himself, too, after passing the town's borders. He'd warned Sirius that he might find the Crinos form, as he'd described it, a little threatening.  
  
A little threatening was no description. Fangs body, already very massive, grew until it stood over nine feet tall. His clothing seemed to vanish into thin air as muscles grew. His hands and feet changed into massive paws with long, cruel claws protruding from them, and his body was covered in thick, muddy-coloured fur. But most threatening of all was his face. As he took on the new form, Fang's head changed into a wolf's maw with long, sharp, deadly fangs, wolf's ears protruding from it. To top all this, a long, hairy tail sprouted from Fangs fur-covered body. But although all of this was shocking beyond words to Sirius, despite Fang's warning, it also triggered some kind of memory, like a long-forgotten dream. Though his mind told him this... thing before him was a monster to be feared, somewhere in his heart he knew it was still Fang, the strange but overall friendly man he'd spoken with earlier.  
  
Fang scooped Remus up with his long, ape-like arms, careful not to hurt the unconscious boy with his claws.  
  
"Come," he said to Sirius, a raw, guttural tone that was no longer even remotely human. And he ran, across the fields, through the Forbidden Forrest, Padfoot on his heels, with unending stamina, never even halting for breath, not even seeming to notice the dead weight of Remus.  
  
Sirius knew they had only scarce time to get to the castle. Remus had turned back shortly after five, but the transformation had been so straining that despite his wondering at his surroundings, he'd fallen back to unconsciousness almost immediately. And he knew that Madam Pomfrey usually picked Remus up around eight, when everyone else was at breakfast and she could be almost certain that no pupils were strolling about outside or having early Quidditch practices.  
  
Still, they reached the grounds in time. For the last part of the run, Sirius - panting and straining his canine form almost to it's limit, lead the way, and he halted only a short way from the castle, just beyond sight. After transforming back to his human form, he turned to Fang, desperately trying to control the urge to run from his fearful sight. Curiously, Fang's Crinos form hadn't bothered him so much when he'd been canine.  
  
Fang stopped in his run, carefully laying Remus body on the ground. Strangely enough, Remus hadn't woken during the run towards Hogwarts, but right now, his eyelids began to flutter. With growing amazement, Sirius watched as Fang's body transformed once again - to that of a very ordinary looking human. No claws remained, no fur on his body, and somehow, the previously vanished clothing reappeared. Not even the slightly pointed ears or the sharper-than usual carnivore teeth Sirius remembered from before remained. Only the huge scar and the crippled hand were still to be seen. Fang also appeared a little smaller than before, though he was still broad-shouldered, but that, of course, could just be the sharp contrast between the frightening wolf-man form and the normal, human body.  
  
Remus finally awoke, and his confused gaze wandered from Sirius to the unknown man. "Where... where am I?" He asked, nervously.  
  
"Safe," Sirius smiled, hugging his friend. "I'll explain later. We have to get you to the Shack now. Think you can walk?"  
  
Shakily, Remus got up from the ground with the help of Sirius. "Yeah."  
  
"Good. Let's go."  
  
Sirius turned to Fang, a shaky smile on his face. "I... I don't know who you really are, or, or /what/ you are, or why you helped us, but thank you. You probably saved Remus' life. The ministry doesn't take kindly to werewolves who... who hurt someone. Thank you."  
  
Fang returned his smile. "No problem, mate. It's a sin not to aid those who are in need. At least, so I've been told. Never thought much of sin and so myself, but I'll help anyone who needs help and who accepts it from me. Hey, I'm sorry if all of this was a little. Well. If it was too much for you. I know you're running out of time right now, but if you can make it, meet me with your mate here in three days time, after sunset, at the city entrance. We got some business to clear up, I guess, and I suppose I know some folk who'll be better at explaining than I am."  
  
With this, Fang turned and stalked off in the direction of the Forbidden forest. Remus shook his head in confusion. "Who was that? And how did I come here, Padfoot?"  
  
Sirius grabbed his friend, lending him his shoulder to lean on. "Later, Rem. Madam Pomfrey could turn up at the Shack any minute now. Perhaps she's already there. The sooner we go, the better."  
  
TBC 


End file.
